Prairie Central head coach Rick Schertz likened Friday’s Corn Belt Conference tilt with Livingston County rival Pontiac to a regional battle. He can only hope for the same outcome if the two teams happen to meet in the postseason at the Herscher Regional.

Schertz’s Hawks were able to ride a 6-2 run in the first two minutes of the fourth quarter to a 35-27 victory over the Indians.

“That’s a regional game,” Schertz said. “Regional games aren’t 70-60, those are low, grind-it-out games. Our regional is going to be like that. There are five evenly matched teams. It’s good preparation for the regional.”

Consider the postseason prep work started. Both teams found themselves in a position to play big at the end after neither team shined in the third quarter.

The contest was close throughout, as the 18-17 Prairie Central lead at the intermission indicated. This was after Pontiac held a 10-9 edge after the opening quarter.

The third quarter was not a thing of beauty for either side. The Hawks got on the board 65 second into the half when Kyle Moody scored to make it 20-17.

Shawn Milhauser took a feed from Carter Jacobs on a break opportunity with 5:13 left in the quarter. And then that was it for the scoring. Neither team put the ball through the basket again until the fourth period.

“I think both of us missed a lot of shots we normally make,” Schertz said. “It was a pressure game. Both teams knew there was a lot on the line.”

The obvious factor in the dry spell was missed shots. There were open looks and decent opportunities for both teams, but neither was able to take advantage.

“Their defense really pressured us and put us in a lot of uncomfortable situations,” PTHS head coach Brandon Martin said. “(But) we just didn’t hit shots. We had open guys in the third and fourth quarters and we missed them.”

There may have been anticipation of a big scoring fourth quarter from the good-sized crowd on hand. And it appeared as if it might have happened.

Lane Maurer connected from the left wing on the Hawks’ first possession and Addison Bounds drove down the left side of the lane for a deuce as the Prairie Central lead grew to 24-19 in a minute.

Logan Gschwendtner hit from the baseline for Pontiac’s first points of the quarter, but Prairie Central answered with an Ed Shafer basket inside, making it 26-21 with 6:09 remaining.

Page 2 of 2 - “That was huge,” Schertz said of the run. “I kept telling our assistants they’re going to make a shot at some point, so we had to make sure to come out and get two quick baskets. A game like this, a 5- or 6-point lead is like 20.”

It really was on this night. Once the Hawks got up by two possessions, they were not seriously challenged. Pontiac did not string together a run in the final frame.

Neither team was looking to push the ball too hard, but there were chances that both sides were unable to take advantage of enough opportunities to put up a lot of points.

“We want a low-scoring game and that’s what we got; we just didn’t hit shots, find the open man,” Martin said. “The effort was great; the execution was average at best.”

Finding the hot hand was easy early for Pontiac. Neil Lambert scored 13 of the Tribe’s first 15 points. Lambert hit a 3-pointer with 6:47 left in the first half to give PTHS a 15-9 lead. He didn’t score the rest of the game.

“We wanted to make sure that if they were going to have success, it had to be through somebody else,” Schertz said of the halftime talk to his team. “That’s the same with other teams and Addison (Bounds), they try and make the others guys beat them.”

There was someone else that beat Pontiac. Kyler Hoffman scored nine points in the fourth quarter and finished with a game-high 15 for the Hawks (14-7). Bounds and Shafer finished with 8 points apiece while Maurer and Moody each scored 2 points.